Literary Criticism

The Greater Inclination

by Edith Wharton Read by Elizabeth Klett 4.4
This is Edith Wharton's earliest published collection of short stories (1899). Like much of her later work, they touch on themes of marriag…

The American

by Henry James Read by Nicholas Clifford (1930-2019) 4.5
One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the writer’s most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least …

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad Read by Bob Neufeld 4.6
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood…

The Warden

by Anthony Trollope Read by Nick Whitley 4.7
The Warden is the first novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", making fun of the Church of E…

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

by Honoré de Balzac Read by Bruce Pirie 4.9
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life is one of the last great works completed by Balzac for his huge novel series entitled The Human Comedy. Sect…

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy Read by Adrian Praetzellis 4.7
One of the greatest English tragic novels, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES (1891) is the story of a “pure woman” who is victimized both by convent…

The Beautiful and Damned

by F. Scott Fitzgerald Read by E. Tavano 4.5
The Beautiful and Damned explores the lives of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria, as they navigate the opulent yet tumultuous world of 1920…

The Claverings

by Anthony Trollope Read by LibriVox Volunteers 4.6
"I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict." - the author T…

The Doctor's Wife

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Read by Kirsten Wever 4.1
This is one of the Victorian “Sensationist” Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: “Lady Audley’s Secret”). It is extr…

The Glory of Clementina Wing

by William John Locke Read by Simon Evers 4.7
The book follows the adventures of two main characters - Clementina Wing, a talented artist in her mid 30's with no social graces and Ephrai…

Madame Bovary

by Gustave Flaubert Read by Peter Dann 4.6
Written over a century and a half ago, Madame Bovary is still an extraordinarily fresh, exciting and shockingly frank novel, at once an acut…

The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway Read by KevinS 4.1
The Sun Also Rises (1926) was Hemingway's first novel to be published, though there is his novella The Torrents of Spring which was publishe…

Master and Man

by Leo Tolstoy Read by Brooks Jensen 4.8
A land owner, Vasili Andreevich, takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to another town. He wishes to get to the town …

Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy Read by Tadhg 4.6
Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, dec…

Agnes Grey

by Anne Brontë Read by Libby Gohn 4.6
Agnes Grey is a poignant exploration of the struggles faced by a young governess in 19th-century England. Anne Brontë draws from her ow…

The Descent of Man

by Edith Wharton Read by Nicholas Clifford (1930-2019) 4.6
This collection of ten stories, first published in 1904, shows Edith Wharton dissecting some of the customs, habits and vagaries of courtshi…

The Permanent Husband

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read by Lee Smalley 4.6
THE PERMANENT HUSBAND, also published as The Eternal Husband, is a psychological novella by the acclaimed Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.…

Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Read by LibriVox Volunteers 4.6
If you like Jane Austen, you will probably like this book!Mrs. Gaskell, as she was often referred to, is considered one of the greatest Brit…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell Read by Tadhg 4.8
Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the iniquity of society, Tressell's cast of hypocritical Christians, ex…

The House of the Dead

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read by Expatriate 4.6
The House of the Dead is a novel published in 1861 by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian p…

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